Raphaël
Hertzog has
published a
very good interview of Christian Perrier (aka bubulle)
where
you'll find insights among other things into the localization
work going on in Debian and the mention of promising work
happening in various "minority" languages like Uyghur,
Northern Sami or Dzongkha and of course the now traditional
Cheese&Wine parties at DebConf.

A big thank you to Christian for all your tireless work, for
your kindness, for mentoring me and others in
the pkg-fonts
team and for helping improve the overall font situation
in Debian and beyond!

Interesting to see the good folks at Mozilla, more specifically
the Websites Task Force, looking at commissionningan open
font for their various websites:
"still in the process of selecting a font
foundry for this project" ... "After picking a foundry the
design process will start and could be done as soon as Q2."
.

And even if "dozens of different scripts" may not entirely
reflect all the variety of writing systems out there, it's
certainly an excellent step forward to have such a prominent
exhibition focus on the subject. What a great opportunity
to bring the values of linguistic diversity, collaborative
typography and open font design to a wider audience and
allow visitors to experience and react to
thousands of beautiful glyphs. Hopefully many visitors will
also discover what the spirit of Ubuntu brings to the world
of type design and how unrestricted software - including
fonts - can help.

" Reason not withstanding, the universe continues unabated.
Its history is terribly long and awfully difficult to
understand, even in its simpler moments which are, roughly
speaking, the beginning and the end. The wave harmonic
theory of historical perception, in its simplest form,
states that history is an illusion caused by the passage of
time, and that time is an illusion caused by the passage of
history. It also states that one's perception of these
illusions is conditioned by three important factors: who you
are; where you are; and when you last used, shared or
contributed to some unrestricted software...

Hi there, this Eddie, your shipboard computer. And I just
want to mention here that we are now closing into orbit
around the legendary planet of 10.10
Release Candidate. Sorry to interrupt your social
evening. But Don't Panic, plenty of people who
know where their towel is and are fairly good at
navigating their way around the incomprehensibly tortuous
Galactic Copyright Laws are taking care of that
particular planet even though releases are big, you just
won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big they
are. Glad to report that all systems are just tickety-boo.

Is this sort of thing gonna happen every time we use the
Infinite Improbability Drive? Probably yes!

But we don’t demand solid facts! What we demand is a total
absence of solid facts! I demand that I may or may not be
demanding rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

The journey and the quest for answers AND questions
continues... (try galactic sector QQ7 Active J Gamma).
I know I will celebrate this promising new stop with a few
Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters myself :-)

Before I talk about the licensing issues I think it's very
good to see how various recommendations from me and others
in the open font
community are now being followed in the structure of the
source tree: detailed FONTLOG,
explicit naming of font files, double-checking and getting
all the metadata right in both binary fields and
human-readable headers, releasing various source items
alongside the final ttfs with documentation of the formats
and how to use them, trademark guidelines, documentation
(more coming). Thankfully what has now been released - on
track for the RC and the upcoming 10.10 release - is much
much more than just a unreviewed code drop over the wall
like it has too often been the case for many other
commissioned fonts in the past. So very well done on that front!

It's up to us in the open font community to come alongside
established designers and entities involved in commissioning
open font design to make them aware of potential issues, to
recommend and advocate best practises from our experience
and from a FLOSS perspective and overall to mutually learn
and share tools, methodologies and as a result improve the
overall trajectories of open font projects creation, release
and maintainership.

Mark was already well-aware of many of the issues
surrounding libre/open fonts from previous face-to-face and
email discussions over the past development cycles of
Ubuntu. Not doubt looking at the previous
commissioning/release/maintainership story of Ubuntu-title
and the relationships with the trademark policy and the
various community branches was very helpful too. Earlier on,
he was one of many reviewers who, when asked when we met at
an international conference in Africa (WSIS), shared his own
thoughts around collaborative font design and the OFL model
as it was being formed, reviewed and refined by the wider
community after SIL's extensive research. Over the past few
years via more discussions with him and members of his team
- and also via input from others like Dennis Jacquerye, Ben
Laenen, Simos Xenitellis and Dave Crossland from the open
font community - he's realised the need for bigger focus on
fonts. And it's certainly good news to see the willingness
to tackle that and to put more resources, time and energy
into getting it done as best as possible for the benefit of
the growing worldwide Ubuntu community. It's also another
very significant contribution to the wider FLOSS ecosystem.
I personally like reading that he's now becoming "a font
nerd" in his own words as indicated in this
recent Scribus-related post. Compare that to an earlier
post
back in 2007...

Even if some people have criticised the way the
commissionning has been done, they will increasingly realise
how bridging the FLOSS culture and the expectations of
proprietary foundries is no easy feat at all. Getting an
established for-profit foundry closer to the way FLOSS is
usually produced and maintained remains an interesting
challenge where few answers are easy... But it looks like
this particular commissioning is another big step in the
right direction. Although more recently it took quite a few
emails (since the discussion at the last LGM) and some
friendly pushing to get reactions to my recommendations on
the Ubuntu font project specifically, I'm now reasonably
happy with the current structure of the open font release
and also with the plans going forward. I really appreciate
the common efforts of Canonical's
design team and DaltonMaag to share
their design choices and methodology at the last UDS and
through various blog posts, making efforts to keep the
community aware of the direction the project is going,
keeping people with font interest and experience engaged and
the whole conversation going.

More recently Paul Sladen's great efforts to interact with
us, triage and tackle the relevant bugs on LP have been a
great help. He was also the one taking on the challenge to
apply the needed modifications (in midstream) to the final
source tree which got released by the foundry. Thanks a lot
for your very worthwhile work Paul!

Also Richard Lee's fonttest webapp
for testing and feedback on the design itself is pretty
amazing and has great potential. It was good to see how the
need for a dedicated feedback and release process pushed the
need for new Launchpad features beyond the usual bug report
channels and teams. I think the phased beta and the private
repository helped with not getting overwhelmed by unusable
feedback. Various people are looking forward to enjoying
more of Launchpad's features for their font projects.

My feeling is that over the past few months, there has been
quite a turnaround of awareness in many foundries towards
the increasingly interesting potential of getting
commissioned to do open fonts. I think that DaltonMaag is
now a leader in that peer group (although big foundries like
Ascender and Paratype have already released open fonts in
the past but via a private process). As Mark has indicated,
Bruno Maag and his team will be looking more closely at the
open font design toolkit (apt-get install
open-font-design-toolkit) in the future to review and
look at interesting challenges for improvements and
solidification based on his expertise. We have plans for
working these comments into a usability and workflow review
of our existing design toolkit which everyone should benefit
from. Stay tuned for work from the LGM community on
this...

Concerning the licensing issues themselves, I really
appreciate the conscious efforts to work upstream with SIL
as the author and steward of the license. Getting the
friendly folks at SFLC involved
again privately with me as the direct correspondent is
certainly a very good thing. But our explanations and
advocacy of some aspects of the existing model were not
convincing enough to keep Canonical from engaging in
creating their own solution. Given the timeline constraints
and upload requirements in the end they decided to do their
own version of the license but thankfully with a view to
only being an interim solution with serious hopes of getting
it merged back in the future.

Via last minutes late-night comments, recommendations and
fixes to make this fffork^Wbranch as appropriate as possible
for this interim phase of the release of the Ubuntu Font
project, we thankfully got Canonical to respect the
requirements of SIL as author and steward of the license as
clearly expressed in our FAQ to
differentiate the Ubuntu Font License from the original OFL:

8.4 I really like the terms of the OFL, but want to change
it a little. Am I allowed to take ideas and actual wording
from the OFL and put them into my own custom license for
distributing my fonts?

We strongly recommend against creating your very own unique
open licensing model. Using a modified or derivative license
will likely cut you off - along with the font(s) under that
license - from the community of designers using the OFL,
potentially expose you and your users to legal liabilities,
and possibly put your work and rights at risk. The OFL went
though a community and legal review process that took years
of effort, and that review is only applicable to an
unmodified OFL. The text of the OFL has been written by SIL
(with review and consultation from the community) and is
copyright (c) 2005-2010 SIL International. You may re-use
the ideas and wording (in part, not in whole) in another
non-proprietary license provided that you call your license
by another unambiguous name, that you do not use the
preamble, that you do not mention SIL and that you clearly
present your license as different from the OFL so as not to
cause confusion by being too similar to the original. If you
feel the OFL does not meet your needs for an open license,
please contact us.

Yes, licensing proliferation is a pain for everyone and as
you can expect SIL sees serious issues with the way the
Ubuntu Font License is worded. Some of the concerns of
Canonical do not have anything to do with the strength of
the OFL from a legal standpoint, but rather reflect their
opinions on how an open font model should work. But this
approach can be an interim solution provided it is
sufficiently differentiated from upstream and great care is
given not to introduce any confusion and hostility against
existing users of the OFL. And I think Mark and Canonical
have shown that they want to do that which is good.

What does this mean for the many existing users of the OFL,
both non-profit and for-profit? Canonical had specific needs
that they felt were not sufficiently clearly addressed in
the current OFL. Do the many users of the OFL - both
non-profit and for-profit - need to be worried? Not at all.
Should every well-meaning and ambitious user of the OFL
start making their own? Please no! Canonical's concerns are
very specific to the structure of the Ubuntu project, and
are related to their strong opinions on about how they
anticipate their own project will evolve.

The status of the OFL is that it still remains the only
font-specific license having undergone proper community-wide
review and having been validated by the FSF as satisfying
the 4 freedoms and Free Software definition, by the Debian
ftpmasters as satisfying the DFSG and by OSI as satisfying
the OSD. The OFL is still the font license which key
organisations in our community have joined to recommend to
upstreams through the Go for OFL
campaign. And in the webfonts scene the OFL is still the
licence under which the vast majority of quality open fonts
are released and available via the Google webfonts
Directory and API or kernest for example. Mozilla
is also discussing how to use more
OFL-ed fonts across their websites. With all the recent
buzz about LibreOffice
this week, it's also worth noting - if you didn't know
already - that the source tree contains various open fonts
under the OFL: Gentium Basic, Gentium Book Basic. And
obviously Magyar Linux Libertine/Magyar Linux Biolinum is on
track for inclusion with all the amazing work done on
high-end smart typographic features by László Németh (thanks
to Graphite). Similarly OOo4kids - the version for children
and young students - bundles Andika and Ecolier to offer
increased legibility. These open fonts are especially useful
in a context where literacy learning is the goal (this is a
request from teachers using this resource). Another example
is how the very talented and dynamic Fedora design
team has recently reviewed available offerings and
decided to use two fonts under OFL for their branding and
visual identity: Comfortaa and Cantarell. More recently
various OFL fonts have been designed and released by
individuals and companies with no such concerns: Google's
commissioning of Ascender for the Chrom*OS fonts being one
example among many. No cause for concern or need to make an
incompatible derivative in any of these projects.

The latest SFLC review, kindly supported by Canonical, has
not turned up any problems and we see it as just another
potential opportunity to clarify some items and think
through some long-term issues together with others. We
remain open to recommendations from lawyers like James
Vasile at the SFLC. BTW SFLC had already given support to
the license model back when the community review was going
on. The favourable listing of the OFL (both version 1.0 and
1.1) on the FSF licensing list which resulted from SFLC
approval remains. As indicated in our FAQ we will certainly
consider ongoing improvements to the well-established OFL
model, and continue to have productive discussions with the
SFLC and others. At this point we have no definite changes
in mind or a timeline for any future version of the OFL, and
will be sure to involve the wider community in such
developments. Any revision process for potential future
versions will be undertaken with great care - as has been
the case in the past - and previously existing licenses
would remain in effect. Any potential changes would need to
support, not diminish, the basic principles as set out in
the currently used licensing model. Any changes will be made
in the spirit of the licensing model and in the interest of
all users. No retroactive changes are possible. Going
forward SIL - as the license author and steward of the OFL
for the community - will look at the community process and
will not be in any way pressurized into catering to the
needs of one entity over those of the whole community of
stakeholders. We should certainly be optimistic but we will
also be realistic and protect the existing values and
commons of the open font community.

No designer or contributor outside of the Ubuntu font
project itself should use this interim license, because it
has not been community-validated and it is not recognized as
valid by the FSF, Debian or the OSI. And with Ubuntu in the
name itself it's very clear that it's organisation and
project-specific.

I do wish the best of success to the Ubuntu font project,
now in its public phase. A quality open font with an
ambitious scope and expansion program will surely be a great
enabler for the various language communities using Ubuntu
worldwide. The concept and spirit of Ubuntu is certainly
linked to enabling humanity to enjoy our big variety of
writing systems! I'm probably not the only one who thinks
that quality open fonts with wide Unicode coverage available
in Ubuntu is in tune with the Ubuntu
philosophy particularly We believe that every
computer user should be able to use their software in the
language of their choice. I intend to continue
contributing to this project as appropriate.

Finally Canonical and other stakeholders in our diverse open
font community and ecosystem have kindly indicated they
would like to practically support and fund ongoing work on
sustaining and growing the open font community and its work
on libre/open font licensing as they benefit from it. If you
also find this is something worth thinking about I recommend
you take a look at http://funding.open-fonts.org.

3 new open fonts have been commissioned by Google to
become
the default font selection for their
Chrom*OS: Arimo, Cousine
and Tinos. According to
bug
5287, these open fonts will replace the Liberation font
family in that particular mobile OS. Looking at the ebuild
SRC_URI (Mmm, I didn't realise
Chrom*OS was based on Gentoo...) and going to the public
download link I can see in the metadata that these 3 fonts
have been designed by
Steve Matteson from Ascender and released under the OFL.

The description blurbs for the 3 fonts indicate the
intent:

Arimo was designed by Steve Matteson as an innovative,
refreshing sans serif design that is metrically compatible
with Arial™. Arimo offers improved on-screen readability
characteristics and the pan-European WGL character set and
solves the needs of developers looking for width-compatible
fonts to address document portability across platforms.

Tinos was designed by Steve Matteson as an innovative,
refreshing sans serif design that is metrically compatible
with Times New Roman™. Tinos offers improved on-screen
readability characteristics and the pan-European WGL
character set and solves the needs of developers looking for
width-compatible fonts to address document portability
across platforms.

Cousine was designed by Steve Matteson as an innovative,
refreshing sans serif design that is metrically compatible
with Courier New™. Cousine offers improved on-screen
readability characteristics and the pan-European WGL
character set and solves the needs of developers looking for
width-compatible fonts to address document portability
across platforms.

Open fonts as THE answer for compatibility and document
portability across platforms! Another smart move IMHO. This
investment in commissioning established foundries to do open
font design will pay off. Makes perfect sense :-D